#IRLday, Twitter Event To Coincide With President Obama’s Visit to Ireland

PocketNative and Dublin City University are planning to make Internet history by creating a Twitter event to coincide with President Obama’s visit to Ireland. #IRLday: Let’s Get Ireland Trending is the first effort of its kind to organise an entire nation to tweet positive messages with a unified voice and put Ireland on Twitter’s global Trending Topics list on May 23rd, 2011.

“We were looking for a unique way to promote Ireland during President Obama’s Visit, and Twitter seemed to be the logical Social Media channel to use”, said Andrew Townley, MD of PocketNative. “We started by putting the idea out on Twitter and got an immediate positive response. At this stage, it’s grown into an all-Ireland effort—including Northern Ireland,” added Townley. “I’ve never seen something like this done before – organising a whole country – for something this positive,” he said.

The Taoiseachs’ Office has committed its support and will tweet on the day through the official @MerrionStreet Twitter account. The list of organisations pledging commitment to the event is impressive, including Tourism Ireland, Failte Ireland, Bord Bia, Good Food Ireland, Irish Hotels Federation, and Bed & Breakfast Ireland from the tourism sector. From the business sector we have Enterprise Ireland, IDA Ireland, The Science Foundation, KPMG and The American Chamber of Commerce, among others. However, in order to create a global trend, #IRLday needs as many people as possible tweeting with the hashtag on the day. Ireland needs YOU to get involved!

Dublin City University is providing a monitoring and curation team on the day so that we can highlight exceptional tweets and respond to any potentially negative uses of #IRLday quickly and decisively. “This is a worthy event to be involved in,” said Dr Theo Lynn, Director of DCU’s LINK Research Center and key supporter of #IRLday. “A project which helps to promote Ireland in a positive light and provide a good news story is welcome,” he said.

#IRLday is a chance for everyone interested in promoting Ireland to have a coordinated, international voice to let the world know what’s so great about the country. At 2pm Irish time on May 23rd (9am in New York), start tweeting and include the #IRLday hashtag as part of your tweets. In this way, we can focus attention on Ireland around the hashtag. Tweet anything you love about Ireland and that you think anyone else will love too; anything of interest to visitors; and anything for anyone who’s interested in Ireland. Tweet anything at all that will be entertaining, conversational or engaging. Be creative!